What Other Countries Are Spending Their Money On

This is what you can do when you don’t pour all your money into wars and bank bailouts:

High-speed trains linking Beijing and Shanghai made their passenger debut Thursday on a $33 billion track China hopes will help ease its overloaded transport system.

The fast link, which has been hit by safety concerns and graft, is opening a year ahead of schedule and will be able to carry 80 million passengers a year — double the current capacity on the 1,318-kilometre (820-mile) route.

“It could play a transformational role in shaping the future economic dynamics in coastal China… by creating more spillover effects to regions lying along the sprawling high-speed railway line,” Ren Xianfang, an analyst at IHS Global Insight, told AFP.